$/*#*. %z4r Wty- KCU&yLf 



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G. P. PUTNAM & SON, 661 BROADWAY. 



1 \)t <^J)00t. 



BY 



WxM. D. O'CONNOR. 



WITH TWO ILLUSTRATIONS BY THOS. NAST. 




NEW YORK : 

G. P. PUTNAM & SON, 661 BROADWAY. 

LONDON I SAMPSON LOW & CO. 
1867. 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1867, by 
G. P. PUTNAM & SON. 

£n the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the 
Southern District of New York. 



The New York Printing Company, 

81, 83, and 85 Centre Street \ 

New York. 




A CHRISTMAS STORY. 




T the West End of Boston 
is a quarter of some fifty 
streets, more or less, common- 
ly known as Beacon Hill. 
It is a rich and respectable 
quarter, sacred to the abodes of Our First 
Citizens. The very houses have become sen- 
tient of its prevailing character of riches and 
respectability ; and, when the twilight deep- 
ens on the place, or at high noon, if your 
vision is gifted, you may see them as long 
rows of Our First Giants, with very corpulent 
or very broad fronts, with solid-set feet of 
sidewalk ending in square-toed curbstone, 
with an air about them as if they had thrust 
their hard hands into their wealthy pockets 
forever, with a character of arctic reserve, 
and portly dignity, and a well-dressed, full- 



6 THE GHOST. 

fed, self-satisfied, opulent, stony, repellant 
aspect to each, which says plainly : " I be- 
long to a rich family, of the very highest 
respectability." 

History, having much to say of Beacon 
Hill generally, has, on the present occasion, 
something to say particularly of a certain 
street which - bends over the eminence, 
sloping steeply down to its base. It is an 
old street — quaint, quiet, and somewhat 
picturesque. It was young once, though — 
having been born before the Revolution, 
and was then given to the city by its father, 
Mr. Middlecott, who died without heirs, and 
did this much for posterity. Posterity has 
not been grateful to Mr. Middlecott. The 
street bore his name till he was dust, and 
then got the more aristocratic epithet of 
Bowdoin. Posterity has paid him by 
effacing what would have been his noblest 
epitaph. We may expect, after this, to see 
Faneuil Hall robbed of its name, and called 
Smith Hall! Republics are proverbially 
ungrateful. What safer claim to public 
remembrance has the old Huguenot, Peter 
Faneuil, than the old Englishman, Mr. 
Middlecott ? Ghosts, it is said, have risen 
from the grave to reveal wrongs done them 



THE GHOST. 7 

by the living ; but it needs no ghost from the 
grave to prove the proverb about republics. 
Bowdoin street only differs from its 
kindred, in a certain shady, grave, old-fogy, 
fossil aspect, just touched with a pensive 
solemnity, as if it thought to itself, " I 'm get- 
ting old but I 'm highly respectable ; that 's 
a comfort." It has, moreover, a dejected, 
injured air, as if it brooded solemnly on the 
wrong done to it by taking away its original 
name, and calling it Bowdoin ; but as if, 
being a very conservative street, it was 
resolved to keep a cautious silence on the 
subject, lest the Union should go to pieces. 
Sometimes it wears a profound and mysteri- 
ous look, as if it could tell something if it 
had a mind to, but thought it best not. 
Something of the ghost of its father — it was 
the only child he ever had ! — walking there 
all the night, pausing at the corners to look 
up at the signs, which bear a strange name, 
and wringing his ghostly hands in lam- 
entation at the wrong done his memory ! 
Rumor told it in a whisper, many years ago. 
Perhaps it was believed by a few of the 
oldest inhabitants of the city ; but the 
highly respectable quarter never heard of it ; 
and, if it had, would not have been bribed 



8 THE GHOST. 

to believe it, by any sum. Some one had 
said that some very old person had seen a 
phantom there. Nobody knew who some 
one was. Nobody knew who the very old 
person was. Nobody knew who had seen 
it ; nor when ; nor how. The very rumor 
was spectral. 

All this was many years ago. Since then 
it has been reported that a ghost was seen 
there one bitter Christmas eve, two or three 
years back. The twilight was already in 
the street ; but the evening lamps were not 
yet lighted in the windows, and the roofs 
and chimney-tops were still distinct in the 
last clear light of the dropping day. It was 
light enough, however, for one to read, 
easily, from the opposite sidewalk, " Dr. C. 
Renton," in black letters, on the silver plate 
of a door, not far from the gothic portal of 
the Swedenborgian church. Near this door 
stood a misty figure, whose sad, spectral 
eyes floated on vacancy, and whose long, 
shadowy white hair, lifted like an airy weft 
in the streaming wind. That was the ghost ! 
It stood near the door a long time, without 
any other than a shuddering motion, as 
though it felt the searching blast, which 
swept furiously from the north up the 



THE GHOST. 9 

declivity of the street, rattling; the shutters 
in its headlong passage. Once or twice, 
when a passer-by, muffled warmly from the 
bitter air, hurried past, the phantom shrank 
closer to the wall, till he was gone. Its 
vague, mournful face seemed to watch for 
some one. The twilight darkened, gradu- 
ally ; but it did not flit away. Patiently it 
kept its piteous look fixed in one direction — 
watching — watching ; and, while the howl- 
ing wind swept frantically through the chill 
air, it still seemed to shudder in the piercing 
cold. 

A light suddenly kindled in an opposite 
window. As if touched by a gleam from 
the lamp, or as if by some subtle interior 
illumination, the spectre became faintly 
luminous, and a thin smile seemed to quiver 
over its features. At the same moment, a 
strong, energetic figure — Dr. Renton, him- 
self — came in sight, striding down the slope 
of the pavement to his own door, his over- 
coat thrown back, as if the icy air were a 
tropical warmth to him, his hat set on 
the back of his head, and the loose ends of 
a 'kerchief about his throat, streaming in 
the nor'wester. The wind set up a howl 
the moment he came in sight, and swept 



10 THE GHOST. 

upon him; and a curious agitation began 
on the part of the phantom. It glided 
rapidly to and fro, and moved in circles, 
and then, with the same swift, silent mo- 
tion, sailed toward him, as if blown thither 
by the gale. Its long, thin arms, with 
something like a pale flame spiring from the 
tips of the slender fingers, were stretched 
out, as in greeting, while the wan smile 
played over its face ; and when he rushed 
by, unheedingly, it made a futile effort to 
grasp the swinging arms with which he ap- 
peared to buffet back the buffeting gale. 
Then it glided on by his side, looking 
earnestly into his countenance, and moving 
its pallid lips with agonized rapidity, as 
if it said: u Look at me — speak to me — 
speak to me — see me ! " But he kept his 
course with unconscious eyes, and a vexed 
frown on his bold, white forehead, betoken- 
ing an irritated mind. The light that had 
shone in the figure of the phantom, dark- 
ened slowly, till the form was only a pale 
shadow. The wind had suddenly lulled, 
and no longer lifted its white hair. It still 
glided on with him, its head drooping on 
its breast, and its long arms hanging by its 
side ; but when he reached the door, it sud- 



THE GHOST. 11 

denly sprang before him, gazing fixedly 
into his eyes, while a convulsive motion 
flashed over its grief-worn features, as if it 
had shrieked out a word. He had his foot 
on the step at the moment. With a start, 
he put his gloved hand to his forehead, 
while the vexed look went out quickly on 
his face. The ghost watched him breath- 
lessly. But the irritated expression came 
back to his countenance more resolutely 
than before, and he began to fumble in his 
pocket for a latch-key, muttering petulantly, 
" What the devil is the matter with me 
now ! " It seemed to him that a voice had 
cried, clearly, yet as from afar, " Charles 
Renton ! " — his own name. He had heard 
it in his startled mind ; but, then, he knew 
he was in a highlv wrought state of nervous 
excitement, and his medical science, with 
that knowledge for a basis, could have 
reared a formidable fortress of explanation 
against any phenomenon, were it even 
more wonderful than this. 

He entered the house; kicked the door 
to ; pulled off his overcoat ; wrenched off 
his outer 'kerchief; slammed them on a 
branch of the clothes-tree ; banged his hat 
on top of them ; wheeled about ; pushed in 



12 THE GHOST. 

the door of his library ; strode in, and, leav- 
ing the door ajar, threw himself into an 
easy chair, and sat there in the fire-reddened 
dusk, with his white brows knit, and his 
arms tightly locked on his breast. The 
ghost had followed him, sadly, and now 
stood motionless in a corner of the room, 
its spectral hands crossed on its bosom, and 
its white locks drooping down. 

It was evident Dr. Renton was in a 
bad humor. The very library caught con- 
tagion from him, and became grouty and 
sombre. The furniture was grim, and sul- 
len, and sulky; it made ugly shadows on 
the carpet and on the wall, in allopathic 
quantity ; it took the red gleams from the 
fire on its polished surfaces, in homoeopathic 
globules, and got no good from them. The 
fire itself peered out sulkily from the black 
bars of the grate, and seemed resolved not 
to burn the fresh deposit of black coals at 
the top, but to take this as a good time to 
remember that those coals had been bought 
in the summer at five dollars a ton — under 
price, mind you — when poor people, who 
cannot buy at advantage, but must get their 
firing in the winter, would then have given 
nine or ten dollars for them. And so (glowered 






THE GHOST. 13 

the fire), I am determined to think of that 
outrage, and not to light them, but to go 
out myself, directly ! And the fire got into 
such a spasm of glowing indignation over 
the injury, that it lit a whole tier of black 
coals with a series of little explosions, be- 
fore it could cool down, and sent a crimson 
gleam over the moody figure of its owner in 
the easy chair, and over the solemn furni- 
ture, and into the shadowy corner filled by 
the ghost. 

The spectre did not move when Dr. Ren- 
ton arose and lit the chandelier. It stood 
there, still and gray, in the flood of mellow 
light. The curtains were drawn, and the 
twilight without had deepened into darkness. 
The fire was now burning in despite of itself, 
fanned by the wintry gusts, which found 
their way down the chimney. Dr. Ren ton 
stood with his back to it, his hands behind 
him, his bold white forehead shaded by a 
careless lock of black hair, and knit sternly ; 
and the same frown in his handsome, open, 
searching dark eyes. Tall and strong, 
with an erect port, and broad, firm shoul- 
ders, high, resolute features, a command- 
ing figure garbed in aristocratic black, and 
not yet verging into the proportions of 



14: THE GHOST. 

obesity — take him for all in all, a very fine 
and favorable specimen of the solid men of 
Boston. And seen in contrast (oh ! could he 
but have known it !) with the attenuated 
figure of the poor, dim ghost ! 

Hark ! a very light foot on the stairs — a 
rich rustle of silks. Everything still again 
— Dr. Benton looking fixedly, with great 
sternness, at the half-open door, from whence 
a faint, delicious perfume floats into the 
library. Somebody there, for certain. 
Somebody peeping in with very bright, 
arch eyes. Dr. Benton knew it, and pre- 
pared to maintain his ill-humor against the 
invader. His face became triply armed 
with severity for the encounter. That's 
Netty, I know, he thought. His daughter. 
So it was. In she bounded. Bright little 
Netty! Gay little Netty! A dear and 
sweet little creature, to be sure, with a deli- 
cate and pleasant beauty of face and figure, it 
needed no costly silks to grace or heighten. 
There she stood. Not a word from her 
merry lips, but a smile which stole over all 
the solitary grimness of the library, and 
made everything better, and brighter, and 
fairer, in a minute. It floated down into 
the cavernous humor of Dr. Benton, and 



THE GHOST. 15 

the gloom began to lighten directly — though 
he would not own it, nor relax a single 
feature. But the wan ghost in the corner 
lifted its head to look at her, and slowly 
brightened as to something worthy a spirit's 
love, and a dim phantom's smiles. Now 
then, Dr. Renton ! the lines are drawn, and 
the foe is coming. Be martial, sir, as when 
you stand in the ranks of the cadets on 
training-days! Steady, and stand the 
charge ! So he did. He kept an inflexible 
front as she glided toward him, softly, 
slowly, with her bright eyes smiling into 
his, and doing dreadful execution. Then 
she put her white arms around his neck, 
laid her dear, fair head on his breast, and 
peered up archly into his stern visage. 
Spite of himself, he could not keep the 
fixed lines on his face from breaking con- 
fusedly into a faint smile. Somehow or 
other, his hands came from behind him, and 
rested on her head. There ! That's all. 
Dr. Eenton surrendered at discretion ! One 
of the solid men of Boston was taken after 
a desperate struggle — internal, of course — 
for he kissed her, and said, "Dear little 
Netty ! " And so she was. 

The phantom watched her with a smile, 



16 THE GHOST. 

and wavered and brightened as if about to 
glide to her; but it grew still, and re- 
mained. 

" Pa in the sulks to-night ? " she asked, 
in the most winning, playful, silvery voice. 

" Pa 's a fool," he answered in his deep 
chest- tones, with a vexed good humor ; 
" and you know it." 

"What's the matter with pa? What 
makes him be a great bear? Papa-sy, 
dear," she continued, stroking his face with 
her little hands, and patting him, very 
much as Beauty might have patted the 
Beast after she fell in love with him — or, 
as if he were a great baby. In fact, he 
began to look then as if he were. 

" Matter ? Oh ! everything 's the matter, 
little Netty. The world goes round too 
fast. My boots pinch. Somebody stole my 
umbrella last year. And I've got a head- 
ache." He concluded this fanciful abstract 
of his grievances by putting his arms around 
her, and kissing her again. Then he sat 
down in the easy-chair, and took her fondly 
on his knee. 

" Pa 's got a headache ! It is t-o-o bad, 
so it is," she continued in the same sooth- 
ing, winning way, caressing his bold, white 



THE GHOST. 17 

brow with her tiny hands. " It 's a horrid 
shame, so it is ! P-o-o-r pa. Where does 
it ache, papa-sy, dear ? In the forehead ? 
Cerebrum or cerebellum, papa-sy % Occiput 
or sinciput, deary ? " 

"Bah! you little quiz," he replied, 
laughing and pinching her cheek, "none 
of your nonsense! And what are you 
dressed up in this way for, to-night ? Silks, 
and laces, and essences, and what not! 
Where are you going, fairy ? " 

" Going out with mother for the evening, 
Dr. Renton," she replied briskly ; " Mrs. 
Larrabee's party, papa-sy. Christmas eve, 
you know. And what are you going 
to give me for a present, to-morrow, pa- 
sy ? " 

" To-morrow will tell, little Betty." 

" Good ! And what are you going to 
give me, so that I can make my presents, 
Beary ? " 

" Ugh ! " but he growled it in fun, and 
had a pocket-book out from his breast- 
pocket directly after. Fives — tens — twen- 
ties — fifties — all crisp, and nice, and new 
bank-notes. 

"Will that be enough, Netty?" He 
held up a twenty. The smiling face 
2 



18 THE GHOST. 

nodded assent, and the bright eyes twin- 
kled. 

"lo, it won't. But that will," he con- 
tinned, giving her a fifty. 

"Fifty dollars, Globe Bank, Boston!" 
exclaimed Netty, making great eyes at him. 
" But we must take all we can get, pa-sy ; 
mustn't we ? It 's too much, though. Thank 
you all the same, pa-sy, nevertheless." And 
she kissed him, and put the bill in a little 
bit of a portemonnaie with a gay laugh. 

" Well done, I declare ! " he said, smil- 
ingly. " But you 're going to the party ? " 

" Pretty soon, pa." 

He made no answer ; but sat smiling at 
her. The phantom watched them, silently. 

"What made pa so cross and grim, to- 
night ? Tell Netty— do," she pleaded. 

" Oh ! because ; — everything went wrong 
with me, to-day. There." And he looked 
as sulky, at that moment, as he ever did in 
his life. 

" No, no, pa-sy ; that won't do. I want 
the particulars," continued Netty, shaking 
her head, smilingly. 

" Particulars ! Well, then, Miss Nathalie 
Renton," he began, with mock gravity, 
" your professional father is losing some of 



THE GHOST. 19 

his oldest patients. Everybody is in ruin- 
ous good health ; and the grass is growing 
in the graveyards." 
" In the winter-time, papa ? — smart grass ! " 
" Not that I want practice," he went on, 
getting into soliloquy ; " or patients, either. 
A rich man who took to the profession sim- 
ply for the love of it, can't complain on that 
score. But to have an interloping she-doctor 
take a family I've attended ten years, out 
of my hands, and to hear the hodge-podge 
gabble about physiological laws, and wo- 
man's rights, and no taxation without 
representation, they learn from her — well, 
it's too bad!" 

"Is that all, pa-sy? Seems to me, I'd 
like to vote, too," was Netty's piquant 
rejoinder. 

" Hoh ! I'll warrant," growled her father. 
" Hope you '11 vote the Whig ticket, Netty, 
when you get your rights." 

" Will the Union be dissolved, then, pa- 
sy — when the Whigs are beaten ? " 

" Bah ! you little plague," he growled, 
with a laugh. "But, then, you women 
don't know anything about politics. So, 
there. As I was saying, everything went 
wrong with me to-day. I 've been speculat- 



20 THE GHOST. 

ing in railroad stock, and singed my 
fingers. Then, old Tom Hollis outbid me, 
to-day, at Leonard's on a rare medical work 
I had set my eyes upon having. Confound 
him ! Then, again, two of my houses are 
tenantless, and there are folks in two others 
that won't pay their rent, and I can't get 
them out. Out they '11 go, though, or I '11 
know why. And, to crown all — um-m. 
And I wish the devil had him! as he 
will." 

" Had who, Beary-papa ? " 

"Him. I'll tell you. The street floor 
of one of my houses in Hanover street lets 
for an oyster-room. They keep a bar there, 
and sell liquor. Last night they had a 
grand row — a drunken fight, and one man 
was stabbed, it 's thought fatally." 

" O, father ! " Netty's bright eyes 
dilated with horror. 

" Yes. I hope he won't die. At any 
rate, there 's likely to be a stir about the 
matter, and my name will be called into 
question, then, as I'm the landlord. And 
folks will make a handle of it, and there '11 
be the deuce to pay, generally." 

He got back the stern, vexed frown, to 
his face, with the anticipation, and beat the 



THE GHOST. 21 

carpet with his foot. The ghost still 
watched from the angle of the room, and 
seemed to darken, while its features looked 
troubled. 

" But, father," said Netty, a little tremu- 
lously, " I would n't let my houses to such 
people. It 's not right ; is it ? Why, it 's 
horrid to think of men getting drunk, and 
killing each other ! " 

Dr. Renton rubbed his hair into dis 
order, with vexation, and then subsided 
into solemnity. 

" I know it 's not exactly right, Netty ; 
but I can't help it. As I said before, I 
wish the devil had that bar-keeper. I 
ought to have ordered him out long ago, 
and then this wouldn't have happened. 
I 've increased his rent twice, hoping to get 
rid of him so ; but he pays without a mur- 
mur ; and what am I to do ? Tou see, he 
was an occupant when the building came 
into my hands, and I let him stay. He 
pays me a good, round rent; and, apart 
from his cursed traffic, he 's a good tenant. 
What can I do ? It 's a good thing for him, 
and it 's a good thing for me, pecuniarily. 
Confound him. Here's a nice rumpus 
brewing ! " 



22 THE GHOST. 

"Dear pa, I'm afraid it's not a good 
thing for you," said Netty, caressing him, 
and smoothing his tumbled hair. " Nor for 
him either. I would n't mind the rent he 
pays you. I'd order him out. It's bad 
money. There 's blood on it." 

She had grown pale, and her voice 
quivered. The phantom glided over to 
them, and laid its spectral hand upon her 
forehead. The shadowy eyes looked from 
under the misty hair into the doctor's face, 
and the pale lips moved as if speaking the 
words heard only in the silence of his heart 
— " hear her, hear her ! " 

" I must think of it," resumed Dr. Ren- 
ton, coldly. " I 'm resolved, at all events, 
to warn him that if anything of this kind 
occurs again, he must quit at once. I dis- 
like to lose a profitable tenant ; for no other 
business would bring me the sum his does. 
Hang it, everybody does the best he can 
with his property — why should n't I ? " 

The ghost, standing near them, drooped 
its head again on its breast, and crossed its 
arms. Netty was silent. Dr. Eenton con- 
tinued, petulantly : 

" A precious set of people I manage to 
get into my premises. There 's a woman 



1 THE GHOST. 23 

hires a couple of rooms for a dwelling, 
overhead, in that same building, and for 
three months I have n't got a cent from 
her. I know these people's tricks. Her 
month's notice expires to-morrow, and out 
she goes." 

" Poor creature ! " sighed Netty. 

He knit his brow, and beat the carpet 
with his foot, in vexation. 

" Perhaps she can't pay you, pa," trem- 
bled the sweet, silvery voice. "You 
would n't turn her out in this cold winter, 
when she can't pay you — would you, pa ? " 

" "Why don't she get another house, and 
swindle some one else ? " he replied, testily ; 
" there 's plenty of rooms to let." 

" Perhaps she can't find one, pa," answer- 
ed Netty. 

" Humbug ! " retorted her father ; "I 
know better." 

" Pa, dear, if I were you, I 'd turn out 
that rumseller, and let the poor woman 
stay a little longer ; just a little, pa." 

"Shan't do it. Hah! that would be 
scattering money out of both pockets. 
Shan't do it. Out she shall go ; and as for 
him — well, he'd better turn over a new 
leaf. There, let us leave the subject, dar- 



24 THE GHOST. 

ling. It vexes me. How did we contrive 
to get into this train. Bah ! " 

He drew her closer to him, and kiss- 
ed her forehead. She sat quietly, with 
her head on his shoulder, thinking very 
gravely. 

" I feel queerly to-day, little Netty," he 
began, after a short pause. "My nerves 
are all high-strung with the turn matters 
have taken." 

" How is it, papa ? The headache ? " she 
answered. 

" Y-e-s — n-o — not exactly ; I don't know," 
he said dubiously ; then, in an absent way, 
" it was that letter set me to think of him 
all day, I suppose." 

" Why, pa, I declare," cried Netty, start- 
ing up, "if I did n't forget all about it, and 
I came down expressly to give it to you ! 
Where is it ? Oh ! here it is." 

She drew from her pocket an old letter, 
faded to a pale yellow, and gave it to him. 
The ghost started suddenly. 

" Why, bless my soul ! it 5 s the very let- 
ter! Where did you get that, Nathalie?" 
asked Dr. Renton. 

" I found it on the stairs after dinner, pa." 

" Yes, I do remember taking it up with 



THE GHOST. 25 

me ; I must have dropped it," he answered, 
musingly, gazing at the superscription. 
The ghost was gazing at it, too, with startled 
interest. 

" What beautiful writing it is, pa," mur- 
mured the young girl. " Who wrote it to 
you ? It looks yellow enough to have been 
written a long time since." 

"Fifteen years ago, Netty. When you 
were a baby. And the hand that wrote it 
has been cold for all that time." 

He spoke with a solemn sadness, as if 
memory lingered with the heart of fifteen 
years ago, on an old grave. The dim figure 
by his side had bowed its head, and all was 
still. 

" It is strange," he resumed, speaking 
vacantly and slowly, " I have not thought of 
him for so long a time, and to-day — especially 
this evening— I have felt as if he were con- 
stantly near me. It is a singular feeling." 

He put his left hand to his forehead, and 
mused — his right clasped his daughter's 
shoulder. The phantom slowly raised its 
head, and gazed at him with a look of 
unutterable tenderness. 

" Who was he, father ? " she asked with a 
hushed voice. 



26 THE GHOST. 

" A young man — an author — a poet. He 
had been my dearest friend, when we were 
boys ; and, though I lost sight of him for 
years — he led an erratic life — we were 
friends when he died. Poor, poor fellow ! 
Well, he is at peace." 

The stern voice had saddened, and was 
almost tremulous. The spectral form was 
still. 

" How did he die, father ? " 

"A long story, darling," he replied 
gravely, " and a sad one. He was very poor 
and proud. He was a genius — that is, a 
person without an atom of practical talent. 
His parents died, the last, his mother, when 
he was near manhood. I was in college 
then. Thrown upon the world, he picked 
up a scanty subsistence with his pen, for a 
time. I could have got him a place in the 
counting-house, but he would not take it ; 
in fact, he was n't fit for it. You can't 
harness Pegasus to the cart, you know. 
Besides, he despised mercantile life — without 
reason, of course ; but he was always 
notional. His love of literature was one of 
the rocks he foundered on. He wasn't 
successful ; his best compositions were too 
delicate — fanciful — to please the popular 



THE GHOST. 27 

taste ; and then he was full of the radical 
and fanatical notions which infected so 
many people at that time in New England, 
and infect them now, for that matter ; and 
his sublimated, impracticable ideas and 
principles, which he kept till his dying day, 
and which, I confess, alienated me from him, 
always staved off his chances of success. 
Consequently, he never rose above the 
drudgery of some employment on news- 
papers. Then he was terribly passionate, 
not without cause, I allow ; but it was n't 
wise. What I mean is this : if he saw, or if 
he fancied he saw, any wrong or injury done 
to any one, it was enough to throw him 
into a frenzy ; he would get black in the 
face and absolutely shriek out his denuncia- 
tions of the wrongdoer. I do believe he 
would have visited his own brother with 
the most unsparing invective, if that brother 
had laid a harming finger on a street-beggar, 
or a colored man, or a poor person of any 
kind. I don't blame the feeling ; though 
with a man like him, it was very apt to be 
a false or mistaken one ; but, at any rate, 
its exhibition was n't sensible. Well, as I 
was saying, he buffeted about in this world 
a long time, poorly paid, fed, and clad; 



28 THE GHOST. 

taking more care of other people than 
he did of himself. Then mental suffer- 
ing, physical exposure, and want killed 
him." 

The stern voice had grown softer than a 
child's. The same look of unutterable 
tenderness brooded on the mournful face of 
the phantom by his side ; but its thin, 
shining hand was laid upon his head,* and 
its countenance had undergone a change. 
The form was still undefined ; but the 
features had become distinct. They were 
those of a young man, beautiful and wan, 
and marked with great suffering. 

A pause had fallen on the conversation, 
in which the father and daughter heard the 
solemn sighing of the wintry wind around 
ihe dwelling. The silence seemed scarcely 
broken by the voice of the young girl. 

"Dear father, this was very sad. Did 
you say he died of want ? " 

" Of want, my child, of hunger and cold. 
I do n't doubt it. He had wandered about, 
as I gather, houseless for a couple of days 
and nights. It was in December, too. 
Some one found him, on a rainy night, lying 
in the street, drenched and burning with 
fever, and had him taken to the hospital. 



THE GHOST. 29 

It appears that lie had always cherished a 
strange affection for me, though I had grown 
away from him ; and in his wild ravings he 
constantly mentioned my name, and they 
sent for me. That was our first meeting 
after two years. I found him in the hospital 
— dying. Heaven can witness that I felt 
all my old love for him return then, but he 
was delirious, and never recognized me. 
And, Nathalie, his hair — it had been coal- 
black, and he wore it very long, he would n't 
let them cut it either ; and as they knew no 
skill could save him, they let him have his 
way — his hair was then as white as snow ! 
God alone knows what that brain must have 
suffered to blanch hair which had been as 
black as the wing of a raven ! " 

He covered his eyes with his hand, and 
sat silently. The fingers of the phantom 
still shone dimly on his head, and its white 
locks drooped above him, like a weft of 
light. 

" What was his name, father ? " asked the 
pitying girl. 

" George Feval. The very name sounds 
like fever. He died on Christmas eve, fifteen 
years ago this night. It was on his death- 
bed, while his mind was tossing on a sea of 



30 THE GHOST. 

delirious fancies, that he wrote me this long 
letter — for to the last, I was uppermost in 
his thoughts. It is a wild, incoherent thing? 
of course — a strange mixture of sense and 
madness. But I have kept it as a memorial 
of him. I have not looked at it for years ; 
but this morning I found it among my 
papers, and somehow it has been in my 
mind all day." 

He slowly unfolded the faded sheets, and 
sadly gazed at the writing. His daughter had 
risen from her half-recumbent posture, and 
now bent her graceful head over the leaves. 
The phantom covered its face with its 
hands. 

"What a beautiful manuscript it is, 
father ! " she exclaimed. " The writing is 
faultless." 

"It is, indeed," he replied. "Would he 
had written his life as fairly ! " 

" Read it, father," said Nathalie. 

" No — but I'll read you a detached passage 
here and there," he answered, after a pause. 
" The rest you may read yourself some time, 
if you wish. It is painful to me. Here 's 
the beginning : 

" ' My Dear Charles Renton : — Adieu, 
and adieu. It is Christmas eve, and I am 



THE GHOST. 31 

going home* I am soon to exhale from my 
flesh, like the spirit of a broken flower. 
Exultemus forever ! ' 

w 7C *7v "TV TC 

"It is very wild. His mind was in a 
fever-craze. Here is a passage that seems 
to refer to his own experience of life : 

" i Your friendship was dear to me. 

I give you true love. Stocks and returns. 

You are rich, but I did not wish to be your 

bounty's pauper. Could Ibeg ? I had my 

work to do for the world, but oh ! the world 

has no place for souls that can only love 

and suffer. How many miles to Babylon ? 

Threescore and ten. Not so far — not near 

so far ! Ask starvelings — they know. 
* x x " * * 

/wanted to do the vjorld good and the world 
has killed me, Charles.' " 

"It frightens me," said Nathalie, as he 
paused. 

"We will read no more," he replied 
sombrely. " It belongs to the psychology 
of madness. To me, who knew him, there 
are gleams of sense in it, and passages where 
the delirium of the language is only a 
transparent veil on the meaning. All the 
remainder is devoted to what he thought 



32 THE GHOST. 

important advice to me. But it 's all wild 
and vague. Poor — poor George ! " 

The phantom still hid its face in its hands, 
as the doctor slowly turned over the pages 
of the letter. Nathalie, bending over the 
leaves, laid her finger on the last, and asked 
— "What are those closing sentences, 
father ? Eead them." 

" Oh ! that is what he called his ' last 
counsel ' to me. It 's as wild as the rest — 
tinctured with the prevailing ideas of his 
career. First he says, Q Farewell— farewell ; ' 
then he bids me take his 'counsel into 
memory on Christmas day / ' then, after 
enumerating all the wretched classes he can 
think of in the country, he says. ' These 
are your sisters and your brothers — love 
them all? Here he says, ' friend, strong 
in wealth for so much good, take my last 
counsel. In the name of the Saviour, I 
charge you he true and tender to mankind? 
He goes on to bid me ' live and labor for 
the fallen, the neglected, the suffering, and 
the poor ; ' and finally ends by advising me 
to help upset any, or all, institutions, laws, 
and so forth, that bear hardly on the 
fag-ends of society ; and tells me that what 
he calls 'a service to humanity 5 is worth 



THE GHOST. 33 

more to the doer than a service to anything 
else, or than anything we can gain from the 
world. Ah, well ! poor George." 

"But isn't all that true, father?" said 
Netty ; " it seems so." 

"H'm," he murmured through his closed 
lips. Then, with a vague smile, folding up 
the letter, meanwhile, he said, " Wild words, 
Netty, wild words. I've no objection to 
charity, judiciously given ; but poor George's 
notions are not mine. Every man for him- 
self, is a good general rule. Every man for 
humanity, as George has it, and in his ac- 
ceptation of the principle, would send us all 
to the alms-house pretty soon. The greatest 
good of the greatest number — that 's my rule 
of action. There are plenty of good insti- 
tutions for the distressed, and I 'm willing 
to -help support 'em, and do. But as for 
making a martyr of one's self, or tilting 
against the necessary evils of society, or turn- 
ing philanthropist at large, or any quixot- 
ism of that sort, I do n't believe in it. We 
did n't make the world, and we can't mend 
it. Poor George. Well — he 's at rest. The 
world was n't the place for him." 

They grew silent. The spectre glided 

slowly to the wall, and stood as if it were 
3 



34 TEE GHOST. 

thinking what, with Dr. Benton's rale of 
action, was to become of the greatest good 
of the smallest number. Nathalie sat on 
her father's knee, thinking only of George 
Feval, and of his having been starved and 
grieved to death. 

" Father," said Nathalie, softly, "I felt, 
while you were reading the letter, as if he 
were near us. Did n't you ? The room was 
so light and still, and the wind sighed so." 

" Netty, dear, I 've felt that all day, I be- 
lieve," he replied. " Hark ! there is the door- 
bell. Off goes the spirit-world, and here 
comes the actual. Confound it ! Some one to 
see me, I'll warrant, and I'm not in the mood." 

He got into a fret at once. Netty was not 
the Netty of an hour ago, or she would 
have coaxed him out of it. But she did not 
notice it now in her abstraction. She had 
risen at the tinkle of the bell, and seated 
herself in a chair. Presently a nose, with 
a great pimple on the end of it, appeared 
at the edge of the door, and a weak, piping 
voice said, reckless of the proper tense, 
" there was a woman wanted to see you, sir." 

"Who is it, James? — no matter, show 
her in." 

He got up with the vexed scowl on his 



THE GHOST. 35 



face, and walked the room. In a minute 
the library door opened again, and a pale, 
thin, rigid, frozen-looking little woman, 
scantily clad, the weather being considered, 
entered, and dropped a curt, awkward bow 
to Dr. Kenton. 

" Oh ! Mrs. Miller. Good evening, ma'am. 
Sit down," he said, with a cold, constrained 
civility. 

The little woman faintly said, " Good 
evening, Dr. Renton," and sat down stiffly, 
with her hands crossed before her, in the 
chair nearest the wall. This was the obdu- 
rate tenant, who had paid no rent for three 
months, and had a notice to quit, expiring 
to-morrow. 

" Cold evening, ma'am," remarked Dr. 
Renton, in his hard way. 

" Yes, sir, it is," was the cowed, awkward 
answer. 

" Won't you sit near the fire, ma'am," said 
Netty, gently; "you look cold." 

"No, miss, thank you. I'm not cold," 
was the faint reply. She was cold, though, 
as well she might be with her poor, thin 
shawl, and open bonnet, in such a bitter 
night as it was outside. And there was a 
rigid, sharp, suffering look in her pinched 



36 THE GHOST. 

features that betokened she might have been 
hungry, too. 

" Poor people don't mind the cold weather, 
miss," she said, with a weak smile, her w voice 
getting a little stronger. "They have to 
bear it, and they get used to it." 

She had not evidently borne it long 
enough to effect the point of indifference. 
Netty looked at her with a tender pity. 
Dr. Renton thought to himself — Hoh ! — 
blazoning her poverty — manufacturing sym- 
pathy already — the old trick — and steeled 
himself against any attacks of that kind, 
looking jealously, meanwhile, at Netty. 

" Well, Mrs. Miller," he said, "what is it 
this evening ? I suppose you've brought me 
my rent." 

The little woman grew paler, and her 
voice seemed to fail on her quivering lips. 
Netty cast a quick, beseeching look at her 
father. 

"Nathalie, please to leave the room." 
We'll have no nonsense carried on here, he 
thought, triumphantly, as Netty- rose, and 
obeyed the stern, decisive order, leaving 
the door ajar behind her. 

He seated himself in his chair, and reso- 
lutely put his right leg up to rest on his left 



THE GHOST. 37 

knee. He did not look at his tenant's face, 
determined that her piteous expressions (got 
up for the occasion, of course) should be 
wasted on him. 

" Well; Mrs. Miller," he said again. 

" Dr. Kenton," she began, faintly gather- 
ing her voice as she proceeded, "I have 
come to see you about the rent. I am very 
sorry, sir, to have made you wait, but we 
have been unfortunate." 

" Sorry, ma'am," he replied, knowing 
what was coming ; " but your misfortunes 
are not my affair. We all have misfortunes, 
ma'am. But we must pay our debts, you 
know." 

" I expected to have got money from my 
husband before this, sir," she resumed, " and 
I wrote to him. I got a letter from him 
to-day, sir, and it said that he sent me fifty 
dollars a month ago, in a letter ; and it ap- 
pears that the post-office is to blame, or 
somebody, for I never got it. It was nearly 
three months' wages, sir, and it is very hard 
to lose it. If it had n't been for that, your 
rent would have been paid long ago, sir." 

" Don't believe a word of that story," 
thought Dr. Eenton, sententiously. 

" I thought, sir," she continued, embold- 



38 THE GHOST. 

ened by his silence, " that if you would be 
willing to wait a little longer, we would 
manage to pay you soon, and not let it oc- 
cur again. It has been a hard winter with 
us, sir ; firing is high, and provisions, and 
everything ; and we 're only poor people, 
you know, and it's difficult to get along." 

The doctor made no reply. 

" My husband was unfortunate, sir, in not 
being able to get employment here," she 
resumed ; "his being out of work, in the 
autumn, threw us all back, and we 've got 
nothing to depend on but his earnings. The 
family that he 's in now, sir, do n't give him 
very good pay — only twenty dollars a month, 
and his board — but it was the best chance he 
could get, and it was either go to Baltimore 
with them, or stay at home and starve, and 
so he went, sir. It 's been a hard time with 
us, and one of the children is sick, now, 
with a fever, and we do n't hardly know how 
to make out a living. And so, sir, I have 
come here this evening, leaving the chil- 
dren alone, to ask you if you would n't be 
kind enough to wait a little longer, and we '11 
hope to make it right with you in the end." 

"Mrs. Miller," said Dr. Eenton, with 
stern composure, " I have no wish to ques- 



THE GHOST. 39 

tion the truth of any statement you may 
make ; but I must tell you plainly, that I 
can't afford to let my houses for nothing. I 
told you a month ago, that if you couldn't pay 
me my rent, you must vacate the premises. 
You know very well that there are plenty of 
tenants who are able and willing to pay when 
the money comes due. You know that." 

He paused as he said this, and, glancing 
at her, saw her pale lips falter. It shook 
the cruelty of his purpose a little, and he 
had a vague feeling that he was doing wrong. 
Not without a proud struggle, during which 
no word was spoken, could he beat it down. 
Meanwhile, the phantom had advanced a 
pace toward the centre of the room. 

" That is the state of the matter, ma'am," 
he resumed, coldly. " People who will not 
pay me my rent must not live, in my tene- 
ments. You must move out. I have no 
more to say." 

" Dr. Kenton," she said faintly, " I have 
a sick child — how can I move now ? Oh ! sir, 
it 's Christmas eve — don 't be hard with us !" 

Instead of touching him, this speech irri- 
tated him beyond measure. Passing all 
considerations of her difficult position in- 
volved in her piteous statement, his anger 



40 THE GHOST. 

flashed at once on her implication that he 
was unjust and unkind. So violent was his 
excitement that it whirled away the words 
that rushed to his lips, and only fanned the 
fury that sparkled from the whiteness of his 
face in his eyes. 

" Be patient with us, sir," she continued; 
" we are poor, but we mean to pay you ; and 
we can't move now in this cold weather ; 
please, don't be hard with us, sir." 

The fury now burst out on his face in a 
red and angry glow, and the words came. 

" Now, attend to me ! " He rose to his 
feet. " I will not hear any more from you. 
I know nothing of your poverty, nor of the 
condition of your family. All I know is 
that you owe me three months' rent, and 
that you can't or won't pay me. I say, there- 
fore, leave the premises to people who can 
and will. You have had your legal notice ; 
quit my house to-morrow ; if you do n't, 
your furniture shall be put in the street. 
Mark me — to-morrow ! " 

The phantom had rushed into the centre 
of the room. Standing, face to face with 
him — dilating — blackening — its whole form 
shuddering with a fury to which his own 
was tame — the semblance of a shriek upon 



THE GHOST. 41 

its flashing lips, and on its writhing features, 
and an unearthly anger streaming from its 
bright and terrible eyes — it seemed to throw 
down, with its tossing arms, mountains of 
hate and malediction on the head of him 
whose words had smitten poverty and suf- 
fering, and whose heavy hand was breaking 
up the barriers of a home. 

Dr. Renton sank again into his chair. 
His tenant — not a woman ! — not a sister in 
humanity! — but only his tenant; she sat 
crushed and frightened by the wall. He 
knew it vaguely. Conscience was battling 
in his heart with the stubborn devils that 
had entered there. The phantom stood be- 
fore him, like a dark cloud in the image of a 
man. But its darkness was lightening slow- 
ly, and its ghostly anger had passed away. 

The poor woman, paler than before, had 
sat mute and trembling, with all her hopes 
ruined. Yet her desperation forbade her 
to abandon the chances of his mercy, and 
she now said : 

" Dr. Renton, you surely do n't mean what 
you have told me. Won't you bear with 
me a little longer, and we will yet make it 
all right with you ? " 

" I have given you my answer," he 



42 THE GHOST. 

returned, coldly; "I have no more to add. 
I never take back anything I say — never ! " 

It was true. He never did — never ! She 
half rose from her seat as if to go ; but 
weak and sickened with the bitter result of 
her visit, she sunk down again with her 
head bowed. There was a pause. Then, 
solemnly gliding across the lighted room, the 
phantom stole to her side with a glory of 
compassion on its wasted features. Tender- 
ly, as a son to a mother, it bent over her ; 
its spectral hands of light rested upon her 
in caressing and benediction ; its shadowy 
fall of hair, once blanched by the anguish 
of living and loving, floated on her throb- 
bing brow; and resignation and comfort 
not of this world, sank upon her spirit, and 
consciousness grew dim within her, and care 
and sorrow seemed to die. 

He who had been so cruel and so hard, sat 
silent in black gloom. The stern and sullen 
mood from which had dropped but one fierce 
flash of anger, still hung above the heat of 
his mind, like a dark rack of thunder-cloud. 
It would have burst anew into a fury of 
rebuke, had he but known his daughter 
was listening at the door, while the colloquy 
went on. It might have flamed violently, 



THE GHOST. 43 

had his tenant made any further attempt to 
change his purpose. She had not. She had 
left the room meekly, with the same curt, 
awkward bow that marked her entrance. 
He recalled her manner very indistinctly ; 
for a feeling, like a mist, began to gather in 
his mind, and make the occurrences of 
moments before uncertain. 

Alone, now, he was yet oppressed with 
a sensation that something was near him. 
Was it a spiritual instinct ? for the phantom 
stood by his side. It stood silently, with 
one hand raised above his head, from which 
a pale flame seemed to flow downward to 
his brain; its other hand pointed move- 
lessly to the open letter on the table beside 
him. 

He took the sheets from the table, think- 
ing, at the moment, only of George Feval ; 
but the first line on which his eye rested 
was, " In the name of the Saviour, I charge 
you, be true and tender to mankind ! " and 
the words touched him like a low voice from 
the grave. Their penetrant reproach pierced 
the hardness of his heart. He tossed the let- 
ter back on the table. The very manner of 
the act accused him of an insult to the dead. 
In a moment he took up the faded sheets 



44 THE GHOST. 

more reverently, but only to lay them down 



again. 



He had not been well that day, and he 
now felt worse than before. The pain in 
his head had given place to a strange sense 
of dilation, and there was a silent, confused 
riot in his fevered brain, which seemed to 
him like the incipience of insanity. Striv- 
ing to divert his mind from what had passed, 
by reflection on other themes, he could not 
hold his thoughts ; they came teeming but 
dim, and slipped and fell away ; and only 
the one circumstance of his recent cruelty, 
mixed with remembrance of George Feval, 
recurred and clung with vivid persistence. 
This tortured him. Sitting there, with 
arms tightly interlocked, he resolved to 
wrench his mind down by sheer will upon 
other things ; and a savage pleasure at what 
at once seemed success, took possession of 
him. In this mood, he heard soft footsteps 
and the rustle of festal garments on the 
stairs, and had a fierce complacency in being 
able to clearly apprehend that it was his 
wife and daughter going out to the party. 
In a moment, he heard the controlled and 
even voice of Mrs. Renton — a serene and 
polished lady with whom he had lived for 



THE GHOST. 45 

years in cold and civil alienation, both see- 
ing as little of each other as possible. With 
a scowl of will upon his brow, he received 
her image distinctly into his mind, even to 
the miimtia of the dress and ornaments he 
knew she wore, and felt an absolutely savage 
exultation in his ability to retain it. Then 
came the sound of the closing of the hall 
door and the rattle of receding wheels, and 
somehow it was Nathalie and not his wife 
that he was holding so grimly in his 
thought, and with her, salient and vivid as 
before, the tormenting remembrance of his 
tenant, connected with the memory of 
George Feval. Springing to his feet, he 
walked the room. 

He had thrown himself on a sofa, still 
striving to be rid of his remorseful visita- 
tions, when the library door opened, and the 
inside man appeared, with his hand held 
bashfully over his nose. It flashed on him 
at once, that his tenant's husband was the 
servant of a family like this fellow ; and, irri- 
tated that the whole matter should be thus 
broadly forced upon him in another way, 
he harshly asked him what he wanted. 
The man only came in to say that Mrs. Ken- 
ton and the young lady had gone out for the 



46 THE GHOST. 

evening, but that tea was laid for him 
in the dining-room. He did not want 
any tea, and if anybody called, he was 
not at home. With this charge, the man 
left the room, closing the door behind 
him. 

If he could but sleep a little! Rising 
from the sofa, he turned the lights of the 
chandelier low, and screened the fire. The 
room was still. The ghost stood, faintly 
radiant, in a remote corner. Dr. Renton 
lay down again, but not to repose. Things 
he had forgotten of his dead friend, now 
started up again in remembrance, fresh from 
the grave of many years ; and not one of 
them but linked itself by some mysterious 
bond to something connected with his ten- 
ant, and became an accusation. 

He had lain thus for more than an hour, 
feeling more and more unmanned by illness, 
and his mental excitement fast becoming in- 
tolerable, when he heard a low strain of mu- 
sic, from the Swedenborgian chapel, hard 
by. Its first impression was one of solemnity 
and rest, and its first sense, in his mind, 
was of relief. Perhaps it was the music of 
an evening meeting; or it might be that 
the organist and choir had met for practice. 



THE GHOST. 47 

Whatever its purpose, it breathed through 
his heated fancy like a cool and fragrant 
wind. It was vague and sweet and wan- 
dering at first, straying on into a strain more 
mysterious and melancholy, but very shad- 
owy and subdued, and evoking the innocent 
and tender moods of early youth before 
worldliness had hardened around his heart. 
Gradually, as he listened to it, the fires in 
his brain were allayed, and all yielded to a 
sense of coolness and repose. He seemed 
to sink from trance to trance of utter rest, 
and yet was dimly aware that either some- 
thing in his own condition, or some super- 
natural accession of tone, was changing the 
music from its proper quality to a harmony 
more infinite and awful. It was still low 
and indeterminate and sweet, but had un- 
accountably and strangely swelled into a 
gentle and sombre dirge, incommunicably 
mournful, and filled with a dark significance 
that touched him in his depth of rest with 
a secret tremor and awe. As he listened, 
rapt and vaguely wondering, the sense of 
his tranced sinking seemed to come to an 
end, and with the feeling of one who had 
been descending for many hours, and at 
length lay motionless at the bottom of a 



48 THE GHOST. 

deep, dark chasm, lie heard the music fail 
and cease. 

A pause, and then it rose again, blended 
with the solemn voices of the choir, sublimed 
and dilated now, reaching him as though 
from weird night gulfs of the upper air, and 
charged with an overmastering pathos as of 
the lamentations of angels. In the dimness 
and silence, in the aroused and exalted con- 
dition of his being, the strains seemed un- 
earthly in their immense and desolate 
grandeur of sorrow, and their mournful and 
dark significance was now for him. Work- 
ing within him the impression of vast, in- 
numerable, fleeing shadows, thick-crowding 
memories of all the ways and deeds of an 
existence fallen from its early dreams and 
aims, poured across the midnight of his soul, 
and under the streaming melancholy of the 
dirge, his life showed like some monstrous 
treason. It did not terrify or madden him ; 
he listened to it rapt utterly as in some 
deadening ether of dream ; yet feeling to his 
inmost core all its powerful grief and accu- 
sation, and quietly aghast at the sinister 
consciousness it gave him. Still it swelled, 
gathering and sounding on into yet mightier 
pathos, till all at once it darkened and spread 



THE GHOST. 49 

wide in wild despair, and aspiring again into 
a pealing agony of supplication, quivered 
and died away in a low and funereal sigh. 

The tears streamed suddenly upon his 
face; his soul lightened and turned dark 
within him ; and as one faints away, so con- 
sciousness swooned, and lie fell suddenly 
down a precipice of sleep. The music rose 
again, a pensive and holy chant, and sounded 
on to its close, unaffected by the action of 
his brain, for he slept and heard it no more. 
He lay tranquilly, hardly seeming to breathe, 
in motionless repose. The room was dim 
and silent, and the furniture took uncouth 
shapes around him. The red glow upon 
the ceiling, from the screened fire, showed 
the misty figure of the phantom kneeling 
by his side. All light had gone from the 
spectral form. It knelt beside him, mutely, 
as in prayer. Once it gazed at his quiet 
face with a mournful tenderness, and its 
shadowy hands caressed his forehead. Then 
it resumed its former attitude, and the slow 
hours crept by. 

At last it rose and glided to the table, 
on which lay the open letter. It seemed to 
try to lift the sheets with its misty hands — 
but vainly. Next it essayed the lifting of 

4 



50 THE GHOST. 

a pen which lay there — but failed. It was 
a piteous sight, to see its idle efforts on 
these shapes of grosser matter, which ap- 
peared now to have to it but the existence 
of illusions. Wandering about the shad- 
owy room, it wrung its phantom hands as 
in despair. 

Presently it grew still. Then it passed 
quickly to his side, and stood before him. 
He slept calmly. It placed one ghostly 
hand above his forehead, and, with the 
other pointed to the open letter. In this 
attitude its shape grew momentarily more 
distinct. It began to kindle into bright- 
ness. The pale flame again flowed from 
its hand, streaming downward to his brain. 
A look of trouble darkened the sleeping face. 
Stronger — stronger ; brighter — brighter ; 
until, at last, it stood before him, a glorious 
shape of light, with an awful look of com- 
manding love in its shining features — and 
the sleeper sprang to his feet with a cry ! 

The phantom had vanished. He saw 
nothing. His first impression was, not 
that he had dreamed, but that, awaking in 
the familiar room, he had seen the spirit of 
his dead friend, bright and awful by his 
side, and that it had gone ! In the flash of 



THE GHOST. 51 

that quick change, from sleeping to waking, 
he had detected, he thought, the unearthly 
being that, he now felt, watched him from 
behind the air, and it had vanished ! The 
library was the same as in the moment of 
that supernatural revealing ; the open letter 
lay upon the table still ; only that was gone 
which had made these common aspects ter- 
rible. Then, all the hard, strong skepticism 
of his nature, which had been driven back- 
ward by the shock of his first conviction, 
recoiled, and rushed within him, violently 
struggling for its former vantage ground; 
till, at length, it achieved the foothold for 
a doubt. Could he have dreamed ? The 
ghost, invisible, still watched him. Yes 
— a dream — only a dream ; but, how vivid 
— how strange ! With a slow thrill creep- 
ing through his veins — the blood curdling 
at his heart — a cold sweat starting on his 
forehead, he stared through the dimness of 
the room. All was vacancy. 

With a strong shudder, he strode forward, 
and turned up the flames of the chandelier. 
A flood of garish light tilled the apartment. 
In a moment,, remembering the letter to 
which the phantom of his dream had 
pointed, he turned and took it from the table. 



52 THE GHOST, 

The last page lay upward, and every word 
of the solemn counsel at the end seemed to 
dilate on the paper, and all its mighty mean- 
ing rushed upon his soul. Trembling in 
his^own despite, he laid it down and moved 
away. A physician, he remembered that he 
was in a state of violent nervous excitement, 
and thought that when he grew calmer its 
effects would pass from him. But the hand 
that had touched him had gone down deeper 
than the physician, and reached what God 
had made. 

He strove in vain. The very room, in its 
light and silence, and the lurking sentiment 
of something watching him, became terrible. 
He could not endure it. The devils in his 
heart, grown pusillanimous, cowered be- 
neath the flashing strokes of his aroused 
and terrible conscience. He could not en- 
dure it. He must go out. He will walk 
the streets. It is not late — it is but ten 
o'clock. He will go. 

The air of his dream still hung heavily 
about him. He was in the street — he hard- 
ly remembered how he had got there, or 
when ; but there he was, wrapped up from 
the searching cold, thinking, with a quiet 
horror in his mind, of the darkened room 



THE GHOST. 53 

he had left behind, and haunted by the 
sense that something was groping about, 
there in the darkness, searching for him. 
The night was still and cold. The full 
moon was in the zenith. Its icy splendor 
lay on the bare streets, and on the walls of 
the dwellings. The lighted oblong squares 
of curtained windows, here and there, 
seemed dim and waxen in the frigid glory. 
The familiar aspect of the quarter had 
passed away, leaving behind only a corpse- 
like neighborhood, whose huge, dead feat- 
ures, staring rigidly through the thin, white 
shroud of moonlight that covered all, left 
no breath upon the stainless skies. Through 
the vast silence of the night he passed 
along; the very sound of his footfalls was 
remote to his muffled sense. 

Gradually, as he reached the first corner, 
he had an uneasy feeling that a thing — a 
formless, unimaginable thing — was dogging 
him. He had thought of going down to 
his club-room ; but he now shrank from en- 
tering, with this thing near him, the lighted 
rooms where his set were busy with cards 
and billiards, over their liquors and cigars, 
and where the heated air was full of their 
idle faces and careless chatter, lest some one 



54 THE GHOST. 

should bawl out that he was pale, and ask 
him what was the matter, and he should 
answer, tremblingly, that something was 
following him, and was near him then ! 
He must get rid of it first ; he must walk 
quickly, and baffle its pursuit by turning 
sharp corners, and plunging* into devious 
streets and crooked lanes, and so lose it ! 

It was difficult to reach through memory 
to the crazy chaos of his mind on that 
night, and recall the route he took while 
haunted by this feeling ; but he afterward 
remembered that, without any other pur- 
pose than to baffle his imaginary pursuer, 
he traversed at a rapid pace a large portion 
of the moonlit city ; always (he knew not 
why) avoiding the more populous thorough- 
fares, and choosing unfrequented and tortu- 
ous byways, but never ridding himself of 
that horrible confusion of mind in which 
the faces of his dead friend and the pale 
woman were strangely blended, nor of the 
fancy that he was followed. Once, as he 
passed the hospital where Feval died, a 
faint hint seemed to flash and vanish from 
the clouds of his lunacy, and almost identify 
the dogging goblin with the figure of his 
dream ; but the conception instantly mixed 



THE GHOST. 55 

with a disconnected remembrance that this 
was Christmas eve, and then slipped from 
him, and was lost. He did not pause there, 
but strode on. But just there, what had 
been frightful became hideous. For at once 
he was possessed with the conviction that 
the thing that lurked at a distance behind 
him, was quickening its movement, and 
coming up to seize him. The dreadful fancy 
stung him like a goad, and, with a start, he 
accelerated his flight, horribly conscious that 
what he feared was slinking along in the 
shadow, close to the dark bulks of the houses, 
resolutely pursuing, and bent on overtaking 
him. Faster ! His footfalls rang hollowly 
and loud on the moonlit pavement, and in 
contrast with their rapid thuds he felt it as 
something peculiarly terrible that the furtive 
thing behind, slunk after him with soundless 
feet. Faster, faster! Traversing only the 
most unfrequented streets, and at that late 
hour of a cold winter night, he met no one, 
and with a terrifying consciousness that his 
pursuer was gaining on him, he desperately 
strode on. He did not dare to look behind, 
dreading less what he might see, than the 
momentary loss of speed the action might 
occasion. Faster, faster, faster ! And all at 



56 THE GHOST. 

once he knew that the dogging thing had 
dropped its stealthy pace and was racing up 
to him. With a bound he broke into a run, 
seeing, hearing, heeding nothing, aware only 
that the other was silently louping on his 
track two steps to his one ; and with that 
frantic apprehension upon him, he gained 
the next street, flung himself around the 
corner with his back to the wall, and his 
arms convulsively drawn up for a grapple ; 
and felt something rush whirring past his 
flank, striking him on the shoulder as it went 
by, with a buffet that made a shock break 
through his frame. That shock restored 
him to his senses. His delusion was sud- 
denly shattered. The goblin was gone. He 
was free. 

He stood panting, like one just roused 
from some terrible dream, wiping the reek- 
ing perspiration from his forehead and 
thinking confusedly and wearily what a 
fool he had been. He felt he had wan- 
dered a long distance from his house, 
but had no distinct perception of his 
whereabouts. He only knew he was in 
some thinly-peopled street, whose familiar 
aspect seemed lost to him in the magical 
disguise the superb moonlight had thrown 



THE GHOST. 57 

over all. Suddenly a film seemed to drop 
from his eyes, as they became riveted on a 
lighted window, on the opposite side of the 
way. He started, and a secret terror crept 
over him, vaguely mixed with the memory 
of the shock he had felt as he turned the 
last corner, and his distinct, awful feeling 
that something invisible had passed him. 
At the same instant he felt, and thrilled to 
feel, a touch, as of a light finger, on his 
cheek. He w T as in Hanover street. Before 
him was the house — the oyster-room staring 
at him through the lighted transparencies 
of its two windows, like two square eyes, 
below ; and his tenant's light in a chamber 
above ! The added shock which this dis- 
covery gave to the heaving of his heart, 
made him gasp for breath. Could it be? 
Did he still dream ? "While he stood pant- 
ing and staring at the building, the city 
clocks began to strike. Eleven o'clock ; it 
was ten when he came away ; how he must 
have driven ! His thoughts caught up the 
word. Driven — by what ? Driven from 
his house in horror, through street and lane, 
over half the city — driven — hunted in ter- 
ror, and smitten bv a shock here ! Driven — 
driven ! He could not rid his mind of the 



58 THE GHOST. 

word, nor of the meaning it suggested. 
The pavements about him began to ring 
and echo with the tramp of many feet, 
and the cold, brittle air was shivered with 
the noisy voices that had roared and 
bawled applause and laughter at the Na- 
tional Theatre all the evening, and were 
now singing and howling homeward. 
Groups of rude men, and ruder boys, their 
breaths steaming in the icy air, began to 
tramp by, jostling him as they passed, till 
he was forced to draw back to the wall, and 
give them the sidewalk. *Dazed and gid- 
dy, in cold fear, and with the returning 
sense of something near him, he stood and 
watched the groups that pushed and tum- 
bled in through the entrance of the oyster- 
room, whistling and chattering as they 
went, and banging the door behind them. 
He noticed that some came out presently, 
banging the door harder, and went, smok- 
ing and shouting, down the street. Still 
they poured in and out, while the street was 
startled with their stimulated riot, and the 
bar-room within echoed their trampling feet 
and hoarse voices. Then, as his glance wan- 
dered upward to his tenant's window, he 
thought of the sick child, mixing this hid- 



THE GHOST. 59 

eons discord in the dreams of fever. The 
word brought np the name and the thought 
of his dead friend. " In the name of the 
Saviour, I charge you be true and tender 
to mankind ! " The memory of these words 
seemed to ring clearly, as if a voice had 
spoken them, above the roar that suddenly 
rose in his mind. In that moment he felt 
himself a wretched and most guilty man. 
He felt that his cruel words had entered 
that humble home, to make desperate pov- 
erty more desperate, to sicken sickness, and 
to sadden sorrow. Before him was the 
dram-shop, let and licensed to nourish the 
worst and most brutal appetites and in- 
stincts of human natures, at the sacrifice 
of all their highest and holiest tendencies. 
The throng of tipplers and drunkards was 
swarming through its hopeless door, to gulp 
the fiery liquor whose fumes give all shames, 
vices, miseries, and crimes, a lawless strength 
and life, and change the man into the pig 
or tiger. Murder was done, or nearly done, 
within those walls last night. Within those 
walls no good was ever done; but, daily, 
unmitigated evil, whose results were reach- 
ing on to torture unborn generations. He 
had consented to it all! He could not 



60 TEE GHOST. 

falter, or equivocate, or evade, or excuse. 
His dead friend's words rang in his con- 
science like the trump of the judgment 
angel. He was conquered. 

Slowly, the resolve to instantly go in up- 
rose within him, and with it a change came 
upon his spirit, and the natural world, 
sadder than before, but sweeter, seemed 
to come back to him. A great feeling of 
relief flowed upon his mind. Pale and 
trembling still, he crossed the street with 
a quick, unsteady step, entered a yard at 
the side of the house, and, brushing by a 
host of white, rattling spectres of frozen 
clothes, which dangled from lines in the in- 
closure, mounted some wooden steps, and 
rang the bell. In a minute he heard foot- 
steps within, and saw the gleam of a 
lamp. His heart palpitated violently as 
he heard the lock turning, lest the answerer 
of his summons might be his tenant. 
The door opened, and, to his relief, he 
stood before a rather decent-looking Irish- 
man, bending forward in his stocking feet, 
with one boot and a lamp in his hand. 
The man stared at him from a wild head 
of tumbled red hair, with a half smile 
round his loose open mouth, and said, 



THE GHOST. 61 

" Begorra ! y ' This was a second floor 
tenant. 

Dr. Kenton was relieved at the sight of 
him ; but he rather failed in an attempt at 
his rent-day suavity of manner, when he 
said : 

" Good evening, Mr. Flanagan. Do you 
think I can see Mrs. Miller to-night ? " 

" She 's up there, docther, anyway." Mr. 
Flanagan made a sudden start for the stairs, 
with the boot and lamp at arm's length be- 
fore him, and stopped as suddenly. " Yull 
go up ? — or wud she come down to ye ? " 
There was as much anxious indecision in 
Mr. Flanagan's general aspect, pending the 
reply, as if he had to answer the question 
himself. 

" I '11 go up, Mr. Flanagan," returned Dr. 
Renton, stepping in, after a pause, and 
shutting the door. " But I 'm afraid she 's 
in bed." 

"Naw — she 's not, sur." Mr. Flana- 
gan made another feint with the boot 
and lamp at the stairs, but stopped again 
in curious bewilderment, and rubbed his 
head. Then, with another inspiration, and 
speaking with such velocity that his words 
ran into each other, pell-mell, he continued : 



62 THE GHOST. 

" Th' small girl's sick, sur. Begorra, I wor 
just pullin' on th' boots tuh gaw for the 
docther, in th' nixt streth, an' summons him 
to her relehf, far it's bad she is. A'id bet- 
ther be goan." Another start, and a move- 
ment to put on the boot instantly, baffled 
by his getting the lamp into the leg of it, 
and involving himself in difficulties in try- 
ing to get it out again without dropping 
either, and stopped finally by Dr. Renton. 

"You needn't go, Mr. Flanagan. I'll 
see to the child. Do n't go." 

He stepped slowly up the stairs, followed 
by the bewildered Flanagan. All this time 
Dr. Renton was listening to the racket from 
the bar-room. Clinking of glasses, rattling 
of dishes, trampling of feet, oaths and 
laughter, and a confused din of coarse voices, 
mingling with boisterous calls for oysters 
and drink, came, hardly deadened by the 
partition walls, from the haunt below, and 
echoed through the corridors. Loud enough 
within — louder in the street without, where 
the oysters and drink were reeling and roar- 
ing off to brutal dreams. People trying to 
sleep here ; a sick child up stairs. Listen ! 
" Two stew ! One roast ! Four ale ! Hurry 
'em up ! Three stew ! In number six ! 



THE GHOST. 63 

One fancy — two roast ! One sling ! Three 
brandy — hot ! Two stew ! One whisk 5 
shm ! Hurry 'em up ! What yeh ''bout ! 
Three brand' punch — hot ! Four stew ! 
What-je-e-h. 'bout ! Two gin-cock-t'il ! One 
stew ! Hu-r-r-y 'em up ! " Clashing, rat- 
tling, cursing, swearing, laughing, shouting, 
trampling, stumbling, driving, slamming, 
of doors. " Hu-r-ry 'em up." 

"Flanagan," said Dr. Eenton, stopping 
at the first landing, " do you have this noise 
every night ? " 

" Naise ? Hoo ! Divil a night, docther, 
but I'm wehked out ov me bed wid 'em, 
Sundays an' all. Sure didn't they murdher 
wan of 'em, out an' out, last night ! " 

"Is the man dead?" 

" Dead ? Troth he is. An' cowld." 

" H'm " — through his compressed lips. 
" Flanagan, you needn't come up. I know 
the door. Just hold the light for me here. 
There, that '11 do. Thank you." He whis- 
pered the last words from the top of the 
second flight. 

"Are ye there, docther?" Flanagan 
anxious to the last, and trying to peer up 
at him with the lamp-light in his eyes. 

"Yes. That '11 do. Thank you !" in the 



64 THE GHOST. 

same whisper. Before he could tap at the 
door, then darkening in the receding light, 
it opened suddenly, and a big Irish woman 
bounced out, and then whisked in again, 
calling to some one in an inner room : 
" Here he is, Mrs. Mill'r," and then bounced 
out again, with a ""Walk royt in, if yoic 
plaze ; here's the choild " — and whisked in 
again, with a " Sure an' Jehms was quick ; " 
never once looking at him, and utterly un- 
conscious of the presence of her landlord. 
He had hardly stepped into the room and 
taken off his hat, when Mrs. Miller came 
from the inner chamber with a lamp in her 
hand. How she started! With her pale 
face grown suddenly paler, and her hand 
on her bosom, she could only exclaim : 
" Why, it's Dr. Eenton ! " and stand, still 
and dumb, gazing with a frightened look at 
his face, whiter than her own. Whereupon 
Mrs. Flanagan came bolting out again, 
with wild eyes and a sort of stupefied horror 
in her good, coarse, Irish features ; and 
then, with some uncouth . ejaculation, ran 
back, and was heard to tumble over some- 
thing within, and tumble something else 
over in her fall, and gather herself up with 
a subdued howl, and subside. 



THE GHOST. 65 

" Mrs. Miller," began Dr. Benton, in a 
low, husky voice, glancing at her frightened 
face, " I hope you '11 be composed. I spoke 
to you very harshly and rudely to-night; 
but I really was not myself — I was in anger 
— and I ask your pardon. Please to over- 
look it all, and — but I will speak of this 
presently; now — I am a physician; will 
you let me look now at your sick child ? " 

He spoke hurriedly, but with evident 
sincerity. For a moment her lips faltered ; 
then a slow flush came up, with a quick 
change of expression on her thin, worn 
face, and, reddening to painful scarlet, died 
away in a deeper pallor. 

" Dr. Renton," she said, hastily, " I have 
no ill-feeling for you, sir, and I know T you 
were hurt and vexed — and I know you 
have tried to make it up to me again, sir — 
secretly. I know who it was, now ; but I 
can't take it, sir. You must take it back. 
You know it was you sent it, sir ? " 

" Mrs. Miller," he replied, puzzled be- 
yond measure, "I don't understand you. 
What do you mean ? " 

" Do n't deny it, sir. Please not to," 

she said imploringly, the tears starting to 

her eyes. " I am very grateful — indeed I 
5 



66 THE GHOST. 



am. But I can't accept it. Do take it 
again." 

"Mrs. Miller," he replied, in a hasty 
voice, " what do yon mean ? I have sent 
yon nothing — nothing at all. I have, there- 
fore, nothing to receive again." 

She looked at him fixedly, evidently 
impressed by the fervor of his denial. 

" Yon sent me nothing to-night, sir ? " 
she asked, doubtfully. 

"Nothing at any time — nothing," he 
answered, firmly. 

It would have been folly to have dis- 
believed the truthful look of his wondering 
face, and she turned away in amazement 
and confusion. There was a long pause. 

" I hope, Mrs. Miller, you will not refuse 
any assistance I can render to your child," 
he said, at length. 

She started, and replied, tremblingly and 
confusedly, " No, sir ; we shall be grateful 
to you, if you can save her" — and went 
quickly, with a strange abstraction on her 
white face, into the inner room. He fol- 
lowed her at once, and, hardly glancing at 
Mrs. Flanagan, who sat there in stupefac- 
tion, with her apron over her head and face, 
he laid his hat on a table, went to the bed- 



THE GHOST. 67 

side of the little girl, and felt her head and 
pulse. He soon satisfied himself that the 
little sufferer was in no danger, under prop- 
er remedies, and now dashed down a pre- 
scription on a leaf from his pocket-book. 
Mrs. Flanagan, who had come out from the 
retirement of her apron, to stare stupidly 
at him during the examination, suddenly 
bobbed up on her legs, with enlightened 
alacrity, when he asked if there was any 
one that could go out to the apothecary's, 
and said, " sure I wull ! " He had a little 
trouble to make her understand that the 
prescription, which she took by the corner, 
holding it away from her, as if it were going 
to explode presently, and staring at it up- 
side down — was to be left — " left, mind 
you, Mrs. Flanagan — with the apothecary 
— Mr. Flint — at the nearest corner — and he 
will give you some things, which you are 
to bring here." But she had shuffled off at 
last with a confident, "yis, sur — aw, I 
knoo," her head nodding satisfied assent, 
and her big thumb covering the note on the 
margin, " charge to Dr. C. Renton, Bow- 
doin street," (which /know, could not keep 
it from the eyes of the angels !) and he sat 
down to await her return. 



68 THE GHOST. 

" Mrs. Miller,'' he said, kindly, " do n't be 
alarmed about your child. She is doing 
well; and, after you have given her the 
medicine Mrs, Flanagan will bring, you '11 
find her much better, to-morrow. She must 
be kept cool and quiet, you know, and she '11 
be all right soon." 

"Oh! Dr. Renton, I am very grateful," 
was the tremulous reply ; " and we will fol- 
low all directions, sir. It is hard to keep 
her quiet, sir ; we keep as still as we can, 
and the other children are very still ; but 
the street is very noisy all the daytime and 
evening, sir, and — " 

" I know it, Mrs. Miller. And 1 'm afraid 
those people down-stairs disturb you some- 
what." 

" They make some stir in the evening, 
sir ; and it 's rather loud in the street some- 
times, at night. The folks on the lower 
floors are troubled a good deal, they say." 

Well they may be. Listen to the bawl- 
ing outside, now, cold as it is. Hark ! 
A hoarse group on the opposite side- 
walk beginning a song. " Ro-o-1 on, sil-ver 
mo-o-n " — . The silver moon ceases to roll 
in a sudden explosion of yells and laughter, 
sending up broken fragments of curses, 



THE GHOST. 69 

ribald jeers, whoopings, and cat-calls, high 
into the night air. " Ga-1-a-ng ! Hi-hi ! 
What ye-e-h 'lout ! " 

" This is outrageous, Mrs. Miller. Where's 
the watchman ? " 

She smiled faintly. "He takes one of 
them off occasionally, sir ; but he 's afraid ; 
they beat him sometimes." A long pause. 

" Is n't your room rather cold, Mrs. Mil- 
ler?" He glanced at the black stove, 
dimly seen in the outer room. "It is 
necessary to keep the rooms cool just now, 
but this air seems to me cold." 

Receiving no answer, he looked at her, 
and saw the sad truth in her averted face. 

"I beg your pardon," he said quickly, 
flushing to the roots of his hair. " I might 
have known, after what you said to me this 
evening," 

"We had a little fire here to-day, sir," 
she said, struggling with the pride and 
shame of poverty ; " but we have been out 
of firing for two or three days, and we owe 
the wharfman something now. The two 
boys picked up a few chips ; but the poor 
children find it hard to get them, sir. Times 
are very hard with us, sir ; indeed they are. 
We 'd have got along better, if my husband's 



70 THE GHOST. 

money had come, and your rent would have 
been paid — " 

" Never mind the rent ! — don't speak of 
that ! " he broke in, with his face all aglow. 
" Mrs. Miller, I have n't done right by you — 
I know it. Be frank with me. Are you 
in want of — have you — need of — food ? " 

No need of answer to that faintly stam- 
mered question. The thin, rigid face was 
covered from his sight by the worn, wan 
hands, and all the pride and shame of pov 
erty, and all the frigid truth of cold, hunger, 
anxiety, and sickened sorrow they had con- 
cealed, had given way at last in a rush of 
tears. He could not speak. With a smit- 
ten heart, he knew it all now. Ah ! Dr. 
Eenton, you know these people's tricks? 
you know their lying blazon of poverty, to 
gather sympathy ? 

" Mrs. Miller " — she had ceased weeping, 
and as he spoke, she looked at him, with 
the tear-stains still on her agitated face, half 
ashamed that he had seen her — "Mrs. Mil- 
ler, I am sorry. This shall be remedied. 
Do n't tell me it shan't ! Do n't ! I say it 
shall ! Mrs. Miller, I'm — I'm ashamed of 
myself. I am, indeed." 

" I am very grateful, sir, I 'm sure," said 



THE GHOST. 71 

she ; " but we do n't like to take charity 
though we need help ; but we can get along 
now, sir — for, I suppose I must keep it, as 
you say you did n't send it, and use it for 
the children's sake, and thank God for his 
good mercy — since I do n't know, and never 
shall, where it came from, now." 

" Mrs. Miller," he said quickly, " you 
spoke in this way before ; and I do n't know 
what you refer to. What do you mean by 
— it ? " 

" Oh ! I forgot sir : it puzzles me so. You 
see, sir, I was sitting here after I got home 
from your house, thinking what I should do, 
when Mrs. Flanagan came up-stairs with a 
letter for me, that she said a strange man 
left at the door for Mrs. Miller ; and Mrs. 
Flanagan could n't describe him well, or un- 
destandingly ; and it had no direction at all, 
only the man inquired who was the land- 
lord, and if Mrs. Miller had a sick child, and 
then said the letter was for me ; and there 
was no writing inside the letter, but there 
was fifty dollars. That 's all, sir. It gave 
me a great shock, sir ; and I could n't think 
who sent it, only when you came to-night, 
I thought it was you ; but you said it was n't, 
and I never shall know who it was, now. It 



72 THE GHOST. 

seems as if the hand of God was in it, sir, 
for it came when everything was darkest, 
and I was in despair."' 

" Why, Mrs. Miller," he slowly answered, 
" this is very mysterious. The man inquir- 
ed if I was the owner of the house — oh ! no 
— he only inquired w T ho was — but then he 
knew I was the — oh ! bother ! I 'm getting 
nowhere. Let 's see. Why, it must be some 
one you know, or that knows your circum- 
stances." 

" But there 's no one knows them but 
yourself; and I told you," she replied ; " no 
one else but the people in the house. It 
must have been some rich person, for the 
letter was a gilt-edge sheet, and there was 
perfume in it, sir." 

" Strange," he murmured. " Well, I give 
it up. All is, I advise you to keep it, and 
I 'm very- glad some one did his duty by you 
in your hour of need, though I ? m sorry it 
was not myself. Here 's Mrs. Flanagan." 

There was a good deal done, and a great 
burden lifted off an humble heart — nay, two ! 
before Dr. Eenton thought of going home. 
There was a patient gained, likely to do Dr. 
Eenton more good than any patient he had 
lost. There was a kettle singing on the 



THE GHOST. 73 

stove, and blowing off a happier steam than 
any engine ever blew on that railroad, 
whose unmarketable stock had singed Dr. 
Kenton's fingers. There was a yellow gleam 
flickering from the blazing fire on the sober 
binding of a good old Book upon a shelf 
with others, a rarer medical work than ever 
slipped at auction from Dr. Kenton's hands, 
since it kept the sacred lore of Him who 
healed the sick, and fed the hungry, and 
comforted the poor, and who was also the 
Physician of souls. 

And there were other offices performed, 
of lesser range than these, before he rose to 
go. There w T ere cooling mixtures blended 
for the sick child ; medicines arranged ; di- 
rections given; and all the items of her 
tendance orderly foreseen, and put in pigeon- 
holes of When and How, for service. 

At last he rose to go. " And now, Mrs. 
Miller," he said, " I '11 come here at ten in 
the morning, and see to our patient. She '11 
be nicely by that time. And — (listen to 
those brutes in the street ! — twelve o'clock, 
too — ah ! there's the bell), — as I was saying, 
my offence to you being occasioned by your 
debt to me, I feel my receipt for your debt 
should commence my reparation to you; 



74 THE GHOST. 

and I'll bring it- to-morrow. Mrs. Miller 
yon do n't quite come at me — what I 
mean is — yon owe me, nnder a notice to quit, 
three months' rent. Consider that paid in 
full. I never will take a cent of it from 
you — not a copper. And I take back the 
notice. Stay in my house as long as you 
like; the longer the better. But, up to 
this date, your rent 's paid. There. I hope 
you '11 have as happy a Christmas as circum- 
stances will allow, and I mean you shall." 

A flush of astonishment — of indefinable 
emotion, overspread her face. 

" Dr. Renton, stop, sir ! " He was mov- 
ing to the door. " Please, sir, do hear me ! 
You are very good — but I can't allow you 
to — Dr. Renton, we are able to pay you the 
rent, and we will, and we must — here — 
now. Oh ! sir, my gratefulness will never 
fail to vou — but here — here — be fair with 
me, sir, and do take it ! " 

She had hurried to a chest of drawers, 
and came back with the letter which she 
had rustled apart with eager, trembling 
hands, and now, unfolding the single bank- 
note it had contained, she thrust it into his 
fingers as they closed. 

"Here, Mrs. Miller" — she had drawn 



THE GHOST. 75 

back with her arms locked on her bosom, 
and he stepped forward — "no. no. This 
shan't be. Come, come, you must take it 
back. Good heavens ! " he spoke low, but 
his eyes blazed in the red glow which broke 
out on his face, and the crisp note in his ex- 
tended hand shook violently at her — " Soon- 
er than take this money from you, I would 
perish in the street ! What ! Do you think 
I will rob you of the gift sent you by some 
one who had a human heart for the dis- 
tresses I was aggravating? Sooner than — 
here, take it ! O my God ! what 's this ? " 

The red glow on his face went out, with 
this exclamation, in a pallor like marble, 
and he jerked back the note to his starting 
eyes ; Globe Bank — Boston — Fifty Dollars. 
For a minute he gazed at the motionless 
bill in his hand. Then, with his hueless 
lips compressed, he seized the blank letter 
from his astonished tenant, and looked at it, 
turning it over and over. Grained letter- 
paper — gilt-edged — with a favorite perfume 
in it. Where 's Mrs. Flanagan ? Outside 
the door, sitting on the top of the stairs, 
with her apron over her head, crying. Mrs. 
Flanagan ! Here ! In she tumbled, her 
big feet kicking her skirts before her, and 
her eyes and face as red as a beet. 



76 TEE GHOST. 

" Mrs. Flanagan, what kind of a looking 
man gave you this letter at the door to- 
night ? " 

" A-w, Docther Kinton, daw n't ax me ! — 
Bother, an' all, an' sure an' I cudn't see him 
wud his fur-r hat, an' he a-11 boondled oop 
wud his co-at oop on his e-ars, an' his big 
han'kershuf smotherin' thuh mouth uv him, 
an' sorra a bit uv him tuh be looked at, 
sehvin' thuh poomple on thuh ind uv his 
naws." 

" The what on the end of his nose ? " 

" Thuh poomple, sur." 

"What does she mean, Mrs. Miller?" 
said the puzzled questioner, turning to his 
tenant. 

" I don't know, sir, indeed," was the re- 
ply; "she said that to me, and I could n't 
understand her." 

" It's thuh poomple, docther. Daw n't 
ye knoo ? Thuh big, flehmin poomple oop 
there." She indicated the locality, by flat- 
tening the rude tip of her own nose with 
her broad forefinger. 

" Oh ! the pimple ! I have it." So he 
had. Netty, Netty ! 

He said nothing, but sat down in a chair, 
with his bold, white brow knitted, and the 
warm tears in his dark eyes. 



THE GHOST. 77 

" You know who sent it, sir, don't you ? " 
asked his wondering tenant, catching the 
meaning of all this. 

"Mrs. Miller, I do. But I cannot tell 
you. Take it, now, and use it. It is doubly 
yours. There. Thank you." 

She had taken it with an emotion in her 
face that gave a quicker motion to his throb- 
bing heart. He rose to his feet, hat in hand, 
and turned away. The noise of a passing 
group of roysterers in the street without, 
came strangely loud into the silence of that 
room. 

" Good night, Mrs. Miller. I'll be here in 
the morning. Good night." 

" Good night, sir. God bless you, sir ! " 

He turned around quickly. The warm 
tears in his dark eyes had flowed on his face, 
which was pale ; and his firm lip quivered. 

" I hope He will, Mrs. Miller— I hope He 
will. It should have been said oftener." 

He was on the outer threshold. Mrs. 
Flanagan had, somehow, got there before 
him, with a lamp, and he followed her down 
through the dancing shadows, with blurred 
eyes. On the lower landing he stopped to 
hear the jar of some noisy wrangle, thick 
with oaths, from the bar-room. He listened 



78 THE GHOST. 

for a moment, and then turned to the star- 
ing stupor of Mrs. Flanagan's rugged Ads- 
age. 

" Sure, they're at ut, docther, wud a wull," 
she said, smiling. 

" Yes, Mrs. Flanagan, you '11 stay up 
with Mrs. Miller to-night, won 't you ? " 

"Dade an' I wull, sur." 

" That 's right. Do. And make her try 
and sleep, for she must be tired. Keep up 
a fire — not too warm, you understand. 
There '11 be wood and coal coming to-mor- 
row, and she '11 pay you back." 

" A-w, docther, daw n't noo ! " 

" Well, w^ell. And — look here ; have you 
got anything to eat in the house ? Yes ; 
well; take it up-stairs. Wake up those 
two boys, and give them something to eat. 
Don 't let Mrs. Miller stop you. Make her 
eat something. Tell her I said she must. 
And, first of all, get your bonnet, and go to 
that apothecary's — Flint's — for a bottle of 
port wine, for Mrs. Miller. Hold on. There's 
the order." (He had a leaf out of his pocket- 
book in a minute, and wrote it down.) " Go 
with this, the first thing. Ring Flint's bell, 
and he '11 wake up. And here 's something 
for your own Christmas dinner, to-morrow." 



THE GHOST. 79 

Out of the roll of bills, lie drew one of the 
tens — Globe Bank — Boston — and gave it to 
Mrs. Flanagan. 

" A-w, daw n't noo, docther." 

" Bother ! It's for yourself, mind. Take 
it. There. And now unlock the door. 
That 's it. Good night, Mrs. Flanagan." 

"An' meh thuh Hawly Vurgin hape 
blessn's on ye, Docther Binton, wud a-11 
thuh compliments uv thuh sehzin, for yur 
thuh—" 

He lost the end of Mrs. Flanagan's part- 
ing benedictions in the moonlit street. He 
did not pause till he was at the door of the 
oyster-room. He paused then, to make 
way for a tipsy company of four, who reeled 
out — the gaslight from the barroom on the 
edges of their sodden, distorted faces — giv- 
ing three shouts and a yell, as they slam- 
med the door behind them. 

He pushed after a party that was just en- 
tering. They went at once for drink to the 
upper end of the room, where a rowdy 
crew, with cigars in their mouths, and liquor 
in their hands, stood before the bar, in a 
knotty wrangle concerning some one who 
was killed. Where is the keeper ? Oh ! there 
lie is, mixing hot brandy punch for two. 



80 



THE GHOST. 



Here, you, sir, go up quietly, and tell Mr. 
Rollins Dr. Renton wants to see him. The 
waiter came back presently to say Mr. Rol- 
lins would be right along. Twenty-five 
minutes past twelve. Oyster trade nearly 
over. Gaudy-curtained booths on the left 
all empty but two. Oyster-openers and 
waiters — three of them in all — nearly done 
for the night, and two of them sparring and 
scuffling behind a pile of oysters on the 
trough, with the colored print of the great 
prize fight between Tom Hyer and Yankee 
Sullivan, in a veneered frame above them 
on the wall. Blower up from the fire oppo- 
site the bar, and stewpans and griddles 
empty and idle on the bench beside it, 
among the unwashed bowls and dishes. Oys- 
ter trade nearly over. Bar still busy. 

Here comes Rollins in his shirt sleeves, 
with an apron on. Thick-set, muscular 
man — frizzled head, low forehead, sharp, 
black eyes, flabby face, with a false, greasy 
smile on it now, oiling over a curious, steal- 
thy expression of mingled surprise and in- 
quiry, as he sees his landlord here at this 
unusual hour. 

" Come in here, Mr. Rollins ; I want to 
speak to you." 



THE GHOST. SI 

*• Yes, sir. Jim" (to the waiter), "go and 
tend bar." They sat down in one of the 
booths, and lowered the curtain. Dr. Ren- 
ton, at one side of the table within, looking 
at Rollins, sitting leaning on his folded 
arms, at the other side. 

" Mr. Rollins, I am told the man who 
was stabbed here last night is dead. Is that 

:" 

" TTell, he is, Dr. Kenton. Died this af- 
ternoon. " 

w Mr. Rollins, this is a serious matter; 
what are you going to do about it V' 

" Can't help it, sir. Who's a-goin' to 
touch me ? Called in a watchman. "Whole 
mess of 'em had cut. TTho knows 'eni ( 
Xobody knows 'em. Man that was stuck 
never see the fellers as stuck him in all his 
life till then. Didn't know which one of 
'em did it. Didn 't know nothing. Do n't 
now, an' never will, 'nless he meets 'em in 
hell. That 's all. Feller's dead, an' who 's 
a-o;oin' to touch me ? Can't do it. Ca-n-'t 
doit." 

"Mr. Rollins," said Dr. Kenton, thor- 
oughly disgusted with this man's brutal in- 
difference," your lease expires in three days.'' 

" "Well, it does. Hope to make a renewal 
6 



82 THE GHOST. 

with you, Dr. Renton. Trade 's good here. 
Should n't mind more rent on, if you insist — 
hope you won't — if it 's anything in reason. 
Promise solium, I shan't have no more 
fightin' in here. Could n't help this. Ac- 
cidents will happen, yo' know." 

"Mr. Rollins, the case is this: if you 
did n't sell liquor here, you 'd have no mur- 
der done in your place — murder, sir. That 
man was murdered. It 's your fault, and it 's 
mine, too. I ought not to have let you the 
place for your business. It is a cursed traf- 
fic, and you and I ought to have found it 
out long ago. I have. I hope you will. 
Now, I advise you, as a friend, to give up 
selling rum for the future : you see what it 
comes to — do n't you ? At any rate, I will 
not be responsible for the outrages that are 
perpetrated in my building any more — I 
will not have liquor sold here. I refuse to 
renew your lease. In three days you must 
move." 

" Dr Renton, you hurt my feelin's. ISTow, 
how would you — " 

"Mr. Rollins, I have spoken to you as a 
friend, and you have no cause for pain. 
You must quit these premises when your 
lease expires. I 'm sorry I can't make you go 



THE GHOST. 83 

before that. Make no appeals to me, if you 
please. I am fixed. Now, sir, goodnight.' 

The curtain was pulled up, and Rollins 
rolled over to his beloved bar, soothing his 
lacerated feelings by swearing like a pirate, 
while Dr. Renton strode to the door, and 
went into the street, homeward. 

He walked fast through the magical moon- 
light, with a strange feeling of sternness, 
and tenderness, and weariness, in his mind. 
In this mood, the sensation of spiritual and 
physical fatigue gaining on him, but a quiet 
moonlight in all his reveries, he reached his 
house. He was just putting his latch-key 
in the door, when it was opened by James, 
who stared at him for a second, and then 
dropped his eyes, and put his hand before 
his nose. Dr. Renton compressed his lips 
on an involuntary smile. 

"Ah! James, you're up late. It's near 
one." 

" I sat up for Mrs. Renton and the young 
lady, sir. They 're just come, and gone up 
stairs." 

" All right, James. Take your lamp and 
come in here. I 've got something to say to 
you." The man followed him into the li- 
brary at once, with some wonder on his 
sleepy face. 



84 THE GHOST. 

"First, put some coal on that fire, and 
light the chandelier. I shall not go up 
stairs to-night." The man obeyed. " Now, 
James, sit down in that chair." He did so, 
beginning to look frightened at Dr. Kenton's 
grave manner. 

" James "—a long pause — " I want you to 
tell me the truth. Where did you go to-night ? 
Come, I have found you out. Speak." 

The man turned as white as a sheet, and 
looked wretched with the whites of his bulg- 
ing eyes, and the great pimple on his nose 
awfully distinct in the livid hue of his feafe 
ures. He was a rather slavish fellow, ancl 
thought he was going to lose his situation. 
Please not to blame him, for he, too, was 
one of the poor. 

" Oh ! Dr. Eenton, excuse me, sir ; I did n't 
mean doing any harm." 

" James, my daughter gave you an undi- 
rected letter this evening ; you carried it to 
one of my houses in Hanover street. Is 
that true % " 

" Ye-yes, sir. I couldn't help it. I only 
did what she told me, sir." 

" James, if my daughter told you to set 
fire to this house, what would you do ? " 

"I wouldn't do it, sir," he stammered, 
after some hesitation. 



THE GHOST. 85 

" Yon wouldn't ? James, if my daughter 
ever tells you to set fire to this house, do it, 
sir ! Do it. At once. Do whatever she 
tells you. Promptly. And I '11 back you." 

The man stared wildly at him, as he re- 
ceived this astonishing command. Dr. Ren- 
ton was perfectly grave, and had spoken 
slowly and seriously. The man was at his 
wits' end. 

" You'll do it James — will you ? " 

"Ye-yes, sir, certainly." 

" That 's right. James, you 're a good 
fellow. James, you 've got a family — a 
wife and children — hav'n't you ? " 

" Yes, sir, I have ; living in the country, 
sir. In Chelsea, over the ferry. For cheap- 
ness, sir." 

"For cheapness, eh? Hard times, James? 
How is it?" 

"Pretty hard, sir. Close, but toler'ble 
comfortable. Pub and go, sir." 

"Rub and go. Ye-r-y well. Rub and 
go. James, I'm going to raise your wages 
— to-morrow. Generally, because you 're a 
good servant. Principally, because you car- 
ried that letter to-night, when my daughter 
asked you. I shan't forget it. To-morrow, 
mind. And if I can do anything for you, 



86 THE GHOST. 

James, at any time, just tell me. That 's 
all. JSTow, you'd better go to bed. And a 
happy Christmas to yon ! " 

" Much obliged to you, sir. Same to you 
and many of 'em. Good-night, sir." And 
with Dr. Kenton's "good-night" he stole 
up to bed, thoroughly happy, and determined 
to obey Miss Eenton's future instructions 
to the letter. The shower of golden light 
which had been raining for the last two 
hours, had fallen, even on him. It would 
fall all day to-morrow in many places, and 
the day after, and for long years to come. 
Would that it could broaden' and increase 
to a general deluge, and submerge the 
world ! 

Eow the whole house was still, and its 
master was weary. He sat there, quietly 
musing, feeling the sweet and tranquil 
presence near him. Now the fire was 
screened, the lights were out, save one dim 
glimmer, and he had lain down on the 
couch with the letter in his hand, and slept 
the dreamless sleep of a child. 

He slept until the gray dawn of Christ- 
mas day stole into the room, and showed 
him the figure of his friend, a shape of glo- 
rious light, standing by his side, and gazing 



THE GHOST. 87 

at him with large and tender eyes ! He 
had no fear. All was deep, serene, and 
happy with the happiness of heaven. Look- 
ing up into that beautiful, wan face — so 
tranquil — so radiant; watching, with a 
child-like awe, the star-fire in those shadowy 
eyes ; smiling faintly, with a great, unuttera- 
ble love thrilling slowly through his frame, 
in answer to the smile of light that shone 
upon the phantom countenance ; so he 
passed a space of time which seemed a calm 
eternity, till, at last, the communion of spirit 
with spirit — of mortal love with love im- 
mortal — was perfected, and the shining 
hands were laid on his forehead, as with a 
touch of air. Then the phantom smiled, 
and, as its shining hands were withdrawn, 
the thought of his daughter mingled in the 
vision. She was bending over him ! The 
dawn — the room, were the same. But the 
ghost of Feval had gone out from earth, 
away to its own land ! 

" Father, dear . father ! Your eyes were 
open, and they did not look at me. There 
is a light on your face, and your features 
are changed ! What is it — what have you 
seen?" 

" Hush, darling : here — kneel by me, for 



83 THE GHOST. 

a little while, and be still. I have seen the 
dead." 

She knelt by him, burying her awe- 
struck face in his bosom, and clung to him 
with all the fervor of her soul. He clasped 
her to his breast, and for minutes all was 
still. 

" Dear child — good and dear child ! " 

The voice was tremulous and low. She 
lifted her fair, bright countenance, now con- 
vulsed with a secret trouble, and dimmed 
with streaming tears, to his, and gazed on 
him. His eyes were shining ; but his pallid 
cheeks, like hers, were wet with tears. How 
still the room was ! How like a thought of 
solemn tenderness, the pale gray dawn! 
The world was far away, and his soul still 
w r andered in the peaceful awe of his dream. 
The world was coming back to him — but 
oh ! how changed ! — in the trouble of his 
daughter's face. 

" Darling, what is it ? Why are you 
here ? Why are you weeping ? Dear child, 
the friend of my better days — of the boy- 
hood when I had noble aims, and life w T as 
beautiful before me — he has been here ! I 
have seen him. He has been with me — oh ! 
for a good I cannot tell ! " 



THE GHOST. 89 

" Father, dear father ! " — he had risen, 
and sat upon the conch, but she still knelt 
before him, weeping, and clasped his hands 
in hers — " I thought of yon and of this let- 
ter, all the time. All last night till I slept, 
and then I dreamed you were tearing it to 
pieces, and trampling on it. I awoke, and 

lay thinking of yon, and of . And I 

thought I heard you come down-stairs, and 
I came here to find you. But you were 
lying here so quietly, with your eyes open, 
and so strange a light on your face. And 
I knew — I knew you were dreaming of him, 
and that you saw him, for the letter lay be- 
side you. O father ! forgive me, but do 
hear me ! In the name of this day — it 's 
Christmas day, father — in the name of the 
time when we must both die — in the name 
of that time, father, hear me 5 That poor 
woman last night — O father ! forgive me, 
but don't tear that letter in pieces and 
trample it under foot ! You know what I 
mean — you know — you know. Do n't tear 
it, and tread it under foot ! " 

She clung to him, sobbing violently, her 
face buried in his hands. 

" Hush, hush ! It 's all well— it 's all well. 
Here, sit by me. So. I have " — his voice 



90 THE GHOST. 

failed him, and he paused. But sitting by 
him — clinging to him — her face hidden in 
his bosom — she heard the strong beating of 
his disenchanted heart ! 

"My child, I know your meaning. I 
will not tear the letter to pieces and trample 
it under foot. God forgive me my life's 
slight to those words. But I learned their 
value last night, in the house where your 
blank letter had entered before me." 

She started, and looked into his face 
steadfastly, while a bright scarlet shot into 
her own. 

"I know all, Netty — all. Tour secret 
was well kept, but it is yours and mine 
now. It was well done, darling — well done. 
Oh ! I have been through strange mysteries 
of thought and life since that starving wo- 
man sat here ! Well — thank God ! " 

" Father, what have you done ? " The 
flush had failed, but a glad color still 
brightened her face, while the tears stood 
trembling in her eyes. 

"All that you wished yesterday," he 
answered. "And all that you ever could 
have wished, henceforth I will do." 

" O father ! "—She stopped. The bright 
scarlet shot again into her face, but with an 



TEE GHOST. 91 

April shower of tears, and the rainbow of 
a smile. 

" Listen to me, Netty, and I will tell you, 
and only you, what I have done." Then, 
while she mutely listened, sitting by his 
side, and the dawn of Christmas broadened 
into Christmas-day, he told her all. 

And when he had told all, and emotion 
was stilled, they sat together in silence for a 
time, she with her innocent head drooped 
upon his shoulder, and her eyes closed, lost in 
tender and mystic reveries ; and he musing 
with a contrite heart. Till at last, the stir 
of daily life began to waken in the quiet 
dwelling, and without, from steeples in the 
frosty air, there was a sound of bells. 

They rose silently, and stood, clinging to 
each other, side by side. 

" Love, we must part," he said, gravely 
and tenderly. " Read me, before .we go, 
the closing lines of George Feval's letter. 
In the spirit of this let me strive to live. 
Let it be for me the lesson of the day. Let 
it also be the lesson of my life." 

Her face was pale and lit with exalta- 
tion as she took the letter from his hand. 
There was a* pause — -and then upon the 
thrilling and tender silver of her voice, the 
words arose like solemn music : 



92 THE GHOST. 

"Farewells— farewell ! But, oh ! take my 
counsel into memory on Christmas JDa/y, 
and forever. Once again, the ancient pro- 
phecy of peace wnd good-will shines on a 
world of wars and wrongs and woes. Its 
soft ra/y shines into the darkness of a land 
wherein swarm slaves, poor laborers, social 
pariahs, weeping women, homeless exiles, 
hunted fugitives, despised aliens, drunkards, 
convicts, wicked children, and Magdalens 
unredeemed. These are but the ghastliest 
figures in that sad army of humanity which 
advances, by a dreadful road, to the Golden 
Age of the poets' dream. These are your 
sisters and your brothers. Love them all. 
Beware of wronging one of them by word 
or deed. friend ! strong in wealth for 
so much good — take my last counsel. In the 
name of the Saviour, I charge you, be true 
and tender to mankind ! Corns out from 
Babylon into manhood, and live and labor 
for the fallen, the neglected, the suffering, 
and the poor. Lover of arts, customs, laws, 
institutions, a/nd forms of society, love these 
things only as they help mankind ! With 
stern love, overturn them, or help to over- 
turn them, when they become cruel to a sin- 
gle — the humblest — human being. In the 



THE GHOST. 93 

world's scale, social position, influence, pub- 
lie power, the applause of majorities, heaps 
of funded gold, services rendered to creeds, 
codes, sects, parties, or federations — they 
weigh vjeight ; hut in God's scale — remem,- 
her ! — on the day of hope, remember ! — your 
least service to Humanity, outweighs them 
all!" 



4/ 



